Chapter 28:The Horned Enigma
The winter monstrosity lay defeated—or so it seemed—reduced to a vast sea of ichor that churned and bubbled across the scorched earth. But in the next heartbeat, it surged back to life, reforming its colossal frame amid the burning remnants of the city's eastern half. Its enormous foot descended like a falling mountain, pulverizing charred houses, splintering the skeletal remains of their inhabitants, and sending flames leaping higher along the blackened spires of crumbling cathedrals.
No longer did its eyes burn with cold apathy. Now, they seethed with malevolent fury, twin voids promising oblivion.
He let out a silent heave of exhaustion. Defeating a being beyond his sequence—let alone a corrupted one—had always been a fool's hope. His gaze swept deeper into the ruined east wing, across countless boroughs and boulevards wreathed in fire, up to the smoke-choked skies. No sign of the Horned Entity. Had his attack truly severed it from existence? He found it hard to believe, given how elusive and treacherous it had proven.
Or had it simply escaped?
Unlikely. An assault that rent distance and space itself left no room for teleportation. His blazing form, golden sword gripped in one hand and a nascent lance forming in the other, rose from the abyssal crater he had carved with his earlier Supernova. He ascended toward the gigantic fiend lumbering slowly from the east, its shadow swallowing the horizon.
Lyra's barrier had shattered; he could sense it. For a fleeting moment, worry clawed at him—had she been caught in the blast? But no, her words echoed in his mind: she was tirelessly ferrying survivors to the Underground Evacuation Refuge. He doubted even that sanctuary would endure if this behemoth descended into its depths.
The winter monstrosity eclipsed the sun, plunging the city into an unnatural twilight. His radiant light alone pierced the gloom—the sole beacon of defiance in this inferno of ruin.
With a gesture, he commanded the debris around him to rebel against gravity. Blackened concrete slabs from shattered streets, chunks of severed houses, splintered trees, twisted metal from toppled gas lamps--all levitated, compressing and folding into dense, swirling masses. And then, through the chaos, he spotted it: the Horned Entity, perfectly concealed behind the monstrosity's massive head, shrouded in the glow of its halos. Its convoluted dark helm tilted upward, locking eyes with him from on high.
The Enigma had survived. He tightened his grip on the lance as the compressed matter accelerated before him, colliding at relativistic speeds. From the convergence point, a blazing kinetic sphere ignited—a miniature sun taking form.
But the winter monstrosity offered no quarter. With a tectonic roar that quaked the foundations of Valen, it unleashed an inverted dome of raw force. A whirlwind of arctic cold whipped outward, clawing at his nascent star, threatening to snuff it cold.
That was merely the prelude. From the deep crater below, he sensed multiple distortions in the astral fabric. In an instant, enormous frost spires erupted from the ground, hurtling skyward like vengeful spears.
Dislodged mid-air, he flung the unstable miniature sun at the incoming icicles. His eyes flicked toward the monstrosity to track its position—but it was gone.
Dismay widened his eyes.
Boom!
The sun detonated in a fiery dome, its explosive suction devouring the frost spires and unleashing a pillar of crimson entropy that pierced the clouds, bathing the world in blood-red light once more. From that crimson veil, a vast claw ripped through, swiping at him with terrifying speed. He somersaulted aside, knowing too well that entering its range meant entrapment in spatial freeze. His blazing form landed on the beast's cold, rotting arm, skidding along its length toward the shoulder joint.
Frantic whispers of his name slithered from the ichor below, gnawing at his focus, but he pressed on. Instinct screamed a warning: icicles burst from the arm in a deadly barrage, jagged spears thrusting to impale him. Sword of the sun in one hand, golden lance in the other, he became a whirlwind of fury—slicing through the frozen barbs mid-somersault, his form phasing like golden mist before they could graze him. They evaporated in his heat, only to reform with savage intensity, forcing him into a frantic ballet of strikes and dodges. Ice shattered in crystalline sprays,The steam hissed as it met his blaze.
A shadow engulfed him—the monstrosity's other palm descending like a collapsing sky, poised to slam him into oblivion. But first, his gaze darted to the halo—no spin, no spatial freeze. Retaliation was possible.
Or so he thought. A dark spike, swirling with captive stars, materialized in his vision. It splintered the descending arm into a pulp of ichor, then streaked toward him like a comet.
It was the entity. The Dream.
He hurled his golden lance in counterstrike, his form dissolving into pale golden fireflies that reformed high above the winter monstrosity. From there, his eyes fixed on the eastern skies.
Boom!
A seismic force slammed into his side, cracking ribs through his blazing aura and hurling him downward in a trail of sparks. He crashed through buildings in a symphony of destruction,his form shattering the stained-glass windows of a cathedral, burrowing through stone walls, slamming into the slabbed streets, and finally embedding in the burning railway tracks of an abandoned station. As the dust settled, the Horned Enigma loomed over the crater, its helm gazing down with cold indifference—even as resonant clashes of energy lit the skies behind it, engulfing the winter monstrosity in light.
The entity raised its hands, birthing a swarm of perfect dark orbs, each swirling with starry voids. They elongated into pitch-black spears, tearing through the air like unbridled rain, materializing before him in a blink.
He reacted in a blaze of motion. His hands blurred, the sword of the sun carving fiery arcs that sliced the spikes into burnt oblivion,ash scattering like dying embers. But the onslaught was endless, a storm of shadows that outnumbered his strikes. It felt futile, each parry buying mere seconds.
His form dissipated once more, reforming atop the twisted husk of a metro train—a mechanical serpent of steam and gears, forged by the church of the Orrery of Eternal Night. From this vantage, he overlooked the Horned Enigma below. His eyes scanned for the winter monstrosity—there. A ravaging surge of energy built behind him.
Palms folding together, he seized the entire steel train, convoluting and compressing it into a colossal sphere. It accelerated, colliding at relativistic speeds to birth another gigantic sun, its core roiling with nuclear fury.
The monstrosity's palm heaved upward from the earth, its head rising to follow. No time to waste—he launched the sun at the ascending hand. But it halted mid-air, flames guttering and dying as if choked by an unseen void.
Frozen space..
The halo.It had spun. He had to escape its reach.
Like a shooting star, he streaked into the skies, evading the colossal grasp. In that instant, the dark Horned Enigma materialized before him—no sword in hand, no words spoken. It simply hurled another dark spike.
He countered with a complex zigzag swipe of his blade. The collision birthed vertical crimson cleaves across the entity's form. Its body erupted in a fireworks of dark fire, illuminating the heavens like a secondary sun.
Alone in the sky, he heaved, his radiance dimming as depletion gnawed at his astral reserves. Below, the winter monstrosity fully emerged, its feet crumbling more buildings into detonating icicles.
It unleashed a deafening cry that shattered his equilibrium, parting the clouds in a shockwave. But the true horror followed, massive pillars of frost birthed around it, glistening under the eastern sun, all converging on him like spears of the gods. They surged forward with hypersonic booms—iridescent spikes of death streaking through the air.
He sighed, steeling himself. The air crackled, then ignited. Atoms and molecules warped under his will, twisting into entropic chaos—a chain reaction of explosions that painted the atmosphere in resounding gold.
Funneling the fury into the Divine Sword of the Sun, he unleashed it in concentrated waves. A district-spanning phoenix erupted, its wings of flame drowning the incoming pillars. Ice overwhelmed, they shattered into harmless mist.
Undeterred, the phoenix dove in blazing wrath, aimed at the pale core clutched in the monstrosity's chest talons. But along its path, a convoluted sphere of darkness intercepted—the Horned Entity, its voice shrilling through the ether:
"I deem this fiery assault of yours no less than futility."
As if bound by divine decree, the phoenix faltered, folding inward upon itself, compressing to nothingness.
Confusion gripped him. He was certain his earlier strike had connected—how did it still persist? Control over causality itself?
The winter monstrosity's palms, ungrateful for the salvation, clamped into a seismic lock. Its halo spun in concurrence, and with a thunderous clap, it birthed rings of impact that carved another district-spanning crater. Only Lord Ian's subconscious Field of Negation spared the city total annihilation—something Steins had mentioned offhand.
A tear in the air snapped him back. His form dissociated just in time, phasing past a dark spire of swirling stars from the Horned Entity.
He reassociated farther away, the entity tilting its convoluted helm, surveying him with apathetic detachment.
Now he was certain, this foe, though terrifying, relied on crude, weaker tactics. Its aura matched the earlier Enigma's essence but felt diluted—like a puddle to an ocean's depth.
This was not the same entity from before his space-rending attack.
Confusion clouded his thoughts, but vigilance held. He glanced at the still Enigma. What had truly transpired?
Who—or what—was this imposter before him?